


Love to be Your Last

by Mersheeple



Series: Hearts&Cauldrons Prompts [68]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Character Death, F/M, Fluff, Funeral, Sweet, Terminal Illnesses, Unknown Illness, eulogy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2020-12-17
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:14:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28119024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mersheeple/pseuds/Mersheeple
Summary: Hermione Granger-Snape reflects on her life with her husband Severus Snape-Granger.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Severus Snape
Series: Hearts&Cauldrons Prompts [68]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1805746
Comments: 19
Kudos: 68





	Love to be Your Last

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thayz_phoenix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thayz_phoenix/gifts).



> I went the route of the sad...I am sorry! But it felt...right for the prompt.
> 
> The prompt was "Oh...you waited."
> 
> The song mentioned (and the title of the work) is Love to be Your Last by Clay Walker. Worth listening to if you like either country music, sweet songs or sad songs...LOL

Hermione stood behind the lectern and smiled sadly at the people waiting for her to speak. These were her friends, her long time friends and, more recently, his friends too. She had managed to pull that fact out of him once in one of their heated debates. They didn’t argue, they debated. That had always been their party line and no one ever argued with them over it. She took a deep breath and glanced again at the cards on the lectern.

“Thank you for coming today. When Sev…When Severus found out he was dying, he had very strong ideas on what he wanted for his funeral. His first rule, as you all know, was no black. Black was his colour. I remember when I first tried to get him out of black clothes. We started with dark blue and, I remember, he hated it. He sat there and slowly, silently, changed the blue to darker and darker shades until it was finally black again. He thought I’d never know.” She paused, laughing softly as a ripple of sniffs and chuckles moved through the crowd.

“I think the first time he wore colour, proper colour, was when he stood up for Draco at his wedding to Harry. Draco made him wear a charcoal suit with a copper cravat. He hated that suit so much. But Draco, you could have put him in pink with an orange tie and he would have worn it. For you. He loved you so much more than he ever told you Draco. He always loved you.” She smiled at the man in the audience, her eyes damp and she noticed the wobbly smile that came to his face.

“You know, I tried to ask him to wear charcoal at our wedding. He refused. Point blank refused me. I threw a complete temper tantrum about it. Eventually, eventually I asked him why he would do it for you, Draco, when he wouldn’t for me. And his answer was simply ‘because it is Draco’. There was absolutely no reasoning with him. And so, he wore that black suit with the frock coat. Of course, I didn’t know that he was wearing the teal cravat until he turned round on our wedding day. But Draco, he only wore charcoal for you.” She sniffed slightly, glancing down at her hands again and looking at the bullet points on her cards.

“Severus was…well, he was many things to many people. But of everything he was, to me and to all of you, he was loyal and oh, he loved us all so much. You really have no idea how much he loved you all. He wrote a list, when the sickness began to take him, of all the people he wanted here. Well, actually he wrote two lists.” She laughed, thinking of her stubborn husband.

“At the beginning, he told me he wanted no one at his funeral. ‘People will only come to check I’m dead’…that’s what he said. He told me that no one should be allowed to check. Then one day, we had visitors. Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy came to our home. I will be honest, I was absolutely terrified. Their son was a little shit, sure, but he had become someone I cared for. These people, these friends of my husband, had hated me so much they had watched as I was tortured in their home. I was terrified.” She paused, raising her eyes and catching the sad looks coming from Narcissa Malfoy.

“You see, at the time when we had found out he was dying, Severus and I had only just begun our friendship. Oh, I know he would laugh to call it that. But it was only that. Of course, we were technically married, thanks to that bloody law, but we had only just begun sharing a home. Our lives were separate. But he wanted me to meet his friends. So, that morning, I dressed in the nicest outfit I could find that covered up my scars and I waited for the hideous words that I knew, somehow, I knew would come. Except they never did. Lucius arrived first, glaring down his nose at me for existing and breathing the same air as him, and then Narcissa entered, took one look at me, and broke down sobbing. Here we were, just more than one year after the end of the war, middle of summer, and this beautiful, strong, powerful couple who terrified me, were apologising and crying. Narcissa asked to see the scar and…thanks to Narcissa’s incredible knowledge of Healing magic, and possibly her knowledge of the Black family curses too, she healed my arm. Oh, the scar is there. But it had faded so completely…Anyway, we became friends after that. And I spoke to Severus about funeral arrangements again.” She clenched her fists, sighing softly and staring at their friends with momentarily blank eyes.

“He told me that the Malfoys would grieve for him. So, they could come to the funeral, and it would be a pretty poor showing if his wife didn’t come. So, he told me to plan a funeral with three people. Severus never expected to live as long as he did. He was convinced that he would be dead within a year of the diagnosis. That’s why, for the first year of our marriage, he would not allow me to invite anyone over. What was the point, he said, when they would not get to know him?” Hermione took a shaky breath and mentally counted the people in the hall, listening to her eulogy for the man she loved.

“There was no cure and we knew it. We knew he was living on borrowed time. He was sure that I would not grieve him. He made me promise that I would move on, that I would live after it was over. I ignored him of course.” She smiled again, thinking of him.

“Two years after the government told me I had to marry someone with a better status and, lucky me, it had to be my old Professor, I kissed Severus for the first time. On our wedding day, we had brushed lips, a mere perfunctory glance so that the bond was sealed. But on our two year anniversary, I kissed him. I told him I cared, that I loved him, that I wanted him, that I wanted this marriage. He asked me if I was sure. He warned me that I would never be his first love. I told him I knew that. I told him I was ok with that. Because I was. I didn’t want to be his first love, I wanted to be his last love. And I was. Oh, he loved me. And I loved him. I always will love him. Yes, he was nineteen years my senior, but that might as well have been nineteen days. Right to the end, Severus was my love. He always will be.” The tears streamed down her face and her vision blurred but she knew she needed to finish the eulogy she had written. It was important to her but, essentially, it was important to him.

“He told me last year that he wanted to discuss his funeral arrangements again. So, I asked him if he wanted to confirm his original plans. And he shook his head and gave me that sad little smile of his. He told me ‘Invite everyone you can think of to my birthday party. I’m sixty this year, it’s a big one. Every single person who comes to celebrate my life while I am still living it, can come to celebrate my life when it is over.’ And then, then I went on a mad rush. I must have invited two hundred people to come to his birthday party. Two hundred people. Before I even considered catering or location or…actually anything except proving to Severus how much he was loved. And somehow, everything fell into place. And that night, as we lay in bed, he told me for the first time ‘Our friends are pretty special people’. Not my friends. Not his friends. _Our_ friends.” She sniffled slightly and then stepped from behind the lectern. She walked from the stage to touch the coffin that held the only man she had ever truly loved.

“Severus, look how loved you are. Darling, you are so loved. And when the time comes for me to join you in our forever sleep, just know that I will find you, and I will love you all over again.” Hermione moved to sit down, her heart full and heavy. The pew was low and she sighed uncomfortably. Twenty years of loving this man had taken its toll on her body. She felt older than her years. Or perhaps she just felt empty now that he was gone. She would sleep well tonight.

The pall bearers carried his coffin ahead of her, Draco and Harry standing on either side at the front of the coffin, just as Severus had asked. The melody of the song they had danced to at their formal Soul Binding five years after the start of their wedding played in the background and she hummed along. They both hated most modern songs but that song spoke to them, the lyrics so true to the way they felt that it didn’t even matter.

“…I don’t care if I’m your first love, I’d just love to be your last…” She didn’t even know that she was singing those specific lyrics as the coffin was lowered but, it was right and it was enough. She lay in her bed that night and, without knowing that’s what it was, hummed the lyrics again, softly whispering to herself as her last breath passed her lips.

Severus stood in front of her, smiling and holding out his hand to her. She stared at him and smiled back.

“Oh…you waited.”

“Always.” And together they walked towards their last adventure, hand in hand and still so in love.


End file.
